How Your Childhood Toys Tell Your Life Story | Chris Byrne | TED

Hey.

I have a question.

Can you come out and play?

Does that sound like fun, like exciting,

maybe there’s a little bit of adventure.

Does that bring back some memories for you?

I sure hope it does.

I know it does for me.

Now I am a toy historian.

You've probably never met one before because there aren't that many of us.

The toy industry doesn't pay much attention to history,

and the industry is all about what's selling today.

So over the past nearly 40 years,

I've had the opportunity to play with kids in many different ways.

And I've learned one thing: that toys don't change.

But I love toy history

because I think that when we look back,

we can see a clear view of our culture and our values

at a specific point in time.

And it's more than just what was fun,

because toys really help prepare kids

to enter a culture as adults at a specific time.

And it all begins with one question.

It starts in the imagination when we say, “What if?”

Right? So I mentioned that the role of play doesn't change.

The toys, however, do.

Widely popular toys are sometimes the first shared cultural experience

many children ever have,

and they can become cultural events as well.

Think back of the fads of the past decades.

We had Rubik's Cube, we had Cabbage Patch,

Zhu Zhu Pets, Pet Rock, right?

And now we're in the middle of Squishmallows.

But I truly think that when we look back at what we loved,

we can see the seeds of who we were going to become,

personally and professionally.

Now I grant you,

this is much more an art than a science,

but I believe that each of us has an inherent play style

that's as unique as our fingerprints.

So very often when I meet somebody,

I will ask them,

"What was your favorite toy as a child?"

I have heard some of the most amazing answers over time,

and I think it's really important

that we look at what those are for ourselves,

because we grow up and we lose sight of that playful person that was inside us.

And I think that person is still there.

And when we embrace the sense of play and adventure,

we can have joy every day.

Now my favorite toy was Matchbox cars.

I loved them, I loved collecting them, playing with them, organizing them.

And I especially loved the Models of Yesteryear series

because I loved the cars

but I was also fascinated by the history of the people

who might have driven them.

So there are two characteristics that I can trace back to that.

I love order,

and I'm fascinated by history.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book about the playwright Terrence McNally.

And Terrence had a puppet theater in his garage.

And he also loved the TV show "Kukla, Fran and Ollie,"

where Fran Allison, a human,

interacted with Kukla, a clown, and Ollie, a dragon,

and they were puppets.

And Terrence told me that playing with his puppets

and watching that show

was some of the best theater training he ever had.

Basketball great Sue Bird told me that she was obsessed -- obsessed! --

with her pogo ball.

Now that came out in 1969, but it would have become a fad mid-80s,

about the time that Sue would have discovered it.

The pogo ball was an inflatable ball,

and it had a platform around the middle,

and you clenched it between your ankles

and you jumped.

It wasn't easy.

Sue went on to become the winningest player in the WNBA,

and I believe that her passion for practice

and her dedication to mastery

served her well on the playground

and translated into her careers at UConn and in the professional world.

Three-time Tony-winning costume designer Gregg Barnes told me

that he loved to play with Barbies, he loved to make clothes for them.

But this was in the 1960s

when playing with Barbie was taboo for boys.

Gregg did it anyway,

and later he had a dream-come-true job

when he designed the costumes for Barbie and Fairytopia,

the tour and the doll.

Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim

loved puzzles and games,

and especially games like Scrabble.

And those of us who love musical theater know where word play landed him.

(Laughter)

Right?

And guess what? This works for us ordinary mortals as well.

When you think about the toys that you loved as a child,

you didn't think about, "Why do I love this?"

You just did, right?

Perhaps you watched the TV show “Blue’s Clues.”

Or you played with your Tonka truck.

Or you had cuddled up to a Care Bear.

Or played that iconic game, Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Yeah. I see --

(Laughter)

I grew up in Delaware,

and all the girls in the neighborhood played Barbie.

Barbie was from Malibu, California,

and Wilmington was about as far away from that as you could get.

But in the late 1960s,

Barbie play all followed the prescribed cultural path for girls:

dating, love, marriage.

My nieces and their friends played Barbie very differently.

They were inspired by the 1985 commercial, “We Girls Can Do Anything,”

that encouraged them to imagine themselves as independent and empowered women.

And that was just the time that more and more professional women

were entering the workforce.

Today, Barbie has left the beach behind.

Sort of.

She’s now every girl, and Ken’s there too.

Broad cultural representation is now baked into the brand,

and our conversations with Gen Alpha kids and their parents

indicate that this is a core value for them in their play.

Barbie is still relevant

because she reflects the world the players see.

And that’s really the secret

that's kept Barbie so popular for the past 65 years.

Her play is grounded in the present

while encouraging kids to imagine possibilities for the future.

I had another friend who was not so much into Barbie,

but she loved her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

She loved being a superhero, and she loved the iconoclastic humor.

As a child, she had a serious accident,

and the doctor who treated her eased her fears with comedy.

That inspired her to go into medicine, because he became a superhero to her,

and now she's a hero to her patients.

Oh, and she's done improv comedy because you cannot lose the humor.

(Laughter)

All of this has a dark side as well.

Have any of you ever cheated at a board game?

Yeah. Right. Right. I’ve heard the stories.

Well, here’s the thing about board games.

Board games are all about rules and structure

and operating within those rules and structure.

And it's one of the first times

we as kids ever experience a moral compass

in the context of our family and our society.

So that at least is the way it's supposed to work.

Years ago, I worked with a guy

who was so proud of how he used to cheat at Monopoly

by stealing money from the bank.

(Laughter)

I hear people -- you've done that?

And wait, because he bragged about --

He did that to his children as well.

Because winning was everything for him.

And for me, I can remember doing that once as a kid

and feeling rotten about it the entire next day.

Well, not this guy,

because he felt no compunction about cheating our clients.

And I think our working relationship collapsed

because our play styles were completely different.

Now I'm not saying that if you cheated at a game,

you’re going to become a crook.

But I am saying that our characters are shaped in part

by how we internalize our play experiences.

So it's never about the piece of plush or the plastic

that gives the toy its power.

It's the narratives we tell

related to that toy in the context of our culture

and our experience.

That's really how we learn to be ourselves.

So take a look back

and think about, you know,

how you became who you became.

The stories, as Pleasant Rowland used to tell me --

she founded American Girl --

and Pleasant always said, "Story over stuff."

Now you may have heard

of the pioneering educator Maria Montessori.

Maria and her colleagues popularized the idea

that play is the work of a child.

And the goal of that work is to emerge into society

as a completely integrated and participating adult.

So once again, look back and think about how much of who you are today

began in the playroom.

Now this is not some Calvinist notion of predestination,

but I do think it's so much fun to look back for clues

as to how we became who we are

and who we might yet be.

It's a little like Harry Potter, right?

But we're the wizards.

We're the wizards,

and our powerful spells are the stories that we tell

and the actions that we take.

We become what we play.

Best of all, you never have to stop.

Because when we play,

we get to experience the joy of new discoveries,

have fun and embrace the adventure.

And best of all, enjoy the ride.

Thank you.

(Applause)